A typical project life cycle:
Inception -> Team Building -> Manpower Deployment ->
Execution -> Deliveries of Products / Features
So we start a project, select few candidates who could build
a team and competencies and then come to location distribution. My focus of this
blog post is this third part and how this should be handled to continuous team
building and smooth deliveries.
At the inception of the project, we get people who soon
become the back-bone of the team and who ensure the critical deliveries of
products and features happen on time. Soon as business demands, few people are
dispatched to client locations (in IT we call it Onsite). This is the first
step of “Manpower Deployment”. Over the time, people at client location get
more exposure to real world business and become SMEs (Subject Matter Experts)
and also those whom client trusts most. So far so good.
Now the real problem starts. As the project grows, team grows;
new people join at remote delivery centers (we call it Offshore). Now these
people are new, neither they have ever interacted with this client nor they
have got actual exposure to the client systems. Dependency on On-site team
increases and soon offshore team becomes a step child of project management
team. Management wants to make offshore team equally capable of producing
results as the onsite team is but they forget one critical aspect of human
behavior. They forget that offshore team has never got the feeling of actual
business and they couldn’t care less about that.
In this situation what should be the first step of
Management. I strongly opine that it should be the knowledge transfer. They
should ensure free flow of knowledge across the shores. Please note, this
should not only be limited to phone calls but it should also include in-person
visits.
The best way of this is the temporary rotation of people who
work at client site and asking them to work at offshore for 3-6 months before
they could go back. This is very important to ensure that the culture and
sincerity of client location comes to offshore and shared with the team. This
also ensures that teams across the shores understand the problem (technical, operational,
managerial or personal) faced at these locations and bridge the trust deficit.
So if you are also struggling to build a multi-location
team, you need to ensure two-way flow of people and knowledge. Failing to do so,
you are only ensuring failure of the project in near to long term.
